'Super-Spaghetti' Developed to Decrease Risk of CVD

26 Jan 2016 --- Consumers could soon see packages of pasta labeled “good source of dietary fiber” and “may reduce the risk of heart disease” as researchers have developed a 'super-spaghetti' with healthy properties which could decrease the risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases.

The collaboration between the University of Granada (UGR) and the Research and Development of Functional Food Center (CIDAF) in Spain, along with two Italian universities, have developed a 'super-spaghetti' of enriched pasta, elaborated with functional flours, which contains more fiber and proteins than normal semolina-based pasta and that helps reducing the risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases.

To determine whether barley could make a new functional spaghetti by providing fiber and antioxidants, the researchers developed a barley flour that contains the most nutritious part of the grain and used it to make pasta. The results, published in Food Research International magazine, prove that new green technologies (such as the so called 'air classification') allow functional flours using the whole cereal grain to be obtained, thus avoiding waste by-products production during the milling process.

As Professor Ana María Gómez Caravaca, lead researcher from the UGR (coarse and fine) by means of a physical process that doesn't modify the properties of the obtained fractions: "These fractions have different chemical characteristics due to their different properties, and they will be used depending on the final product we want to obtain. Our work has proven how we can obtain two fractions by air-classifying whole barley flour, one of them is enriched in antioxidant compounds and soluble fiber (specially betaglucans), and the other contains more proteins".

More antioxidants and soluble fiber

This research, carried out with the collaboration of two Italian universities (University of Bologna and University of Molise) and partially funded by the CEI BioTic center, has also been used for elaborating spaghetti using the coarse fraction. The results obtained have proven that the fraction used in the elaboration of spaghetti allows to enrich the final product in soluble fiber (betaglucans) as well as in catechin-derived antioxidant compounds. 

"Comparing the obtained final product with the ones available at the market we observed that our spaghetti was especially rich in betaglucans. The amount of betaglucans present in our functional spaghetti fulfilled the requirements of the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in order to be able to label it as 'good source of fiber' and 'might lessen the risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases'”.

Barley, a grain that is an excellent source of fiber and antioxidants, is already added to some bakery products. However, due to the technological novelty of this 'super-spaghetti' product, the American Chemical Society (ACS) has devoted an article in its Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Professor Gómez Caravaca says that the results obtained so far have allowed two Italian companies to develop a new line of pasta using coarse fractions obtained by means of air classification.  She concluded: "These products allow to reach, with a single dose (a dish of pasta), 70% of the daily betaglucans dose recommended by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)".